Free vs. Fee: Latest OPA Data

With data from comSCORE (who track what people actually do online, not what publishers say they are selling) Jan-June 2004 content sales were $753 million. It’s a 14% increase over the same period in 2003.

Bear in mind, this does *not* include the vast majority of B-to-B content sales (comSCORE has a very hard time tracking anything sold to a micro, vertical or niche audience) nor does it include porn.

According to a separate study from the Internet Advertising Bureau, online advertising dollars shot up 35% in Q3 to $2.43 billion. To our knowledge this data is self-reported by the publishers who sell ads. So it’s not nearly as accurate as comSCORE stats.

Anyway, OPA says the point is the gap between online ad spends and content purchases is widening. The ratio will be something like 10 to 1.5 in favor of ad spends supporting content online.